On Sept. 18, the guitarist is releasing “Crosseyed Heart,” his third solo album of his career and first since 1992’s “Main Offender.” According to a press release, Richards will explore different genres on the album, taking a country approach on the song “Robbed Blind,” reggae on “Love Overdue” and blues on “Blues in the Morning.” Also on tap is “Illusion,” a ballad he co-wrote and sings with Norah Jones. Read More »

Norah Jones‘s solo debut album sold more than 11 million copies, but for her newest release she’s decided to join a band. The superstar singer has formed a country trio called Puss N Boots with her friends Sasha Dobson (a jazz vocalist and drummer) and Catherine Popper (a bassist and singer). The trio’s debut album “No Fools, No Fun” is due out July 15, and they stopped by the WSJ Cafe to sit for an interview and perform three original songs from the album.

So Brown spent seven years working on her debut album, “Point Legere,” which she wrote as a song cycle about a secluded peninsula by the same name near Mobile, Ala. The album features contributions from New York jazz and pop musicians including Adam Levy, Sasha Dobson, Jim Campilongo and Norah Jones, who sings on “August.” Speakeasy premieres the song today.

Raised in Houston, Brown moved in 2004 to Point Legere, where members of her family had lived for four generations. The singer and songwriter has said she has always thought of the peninsula as a refuge where she could give free rein to her imagination. It manifests on the album in songs that range from dark and foreboding to wistful and elegiac. “August” falls into the latter category. It’s a languid, jazzy tune with dusky guitar, brushed drums, subtle bass clarinet lines from Doug Wieselman and spare, twinkling piano, resulting in a sound that evokes the heat of a late afternoon in summer.

My connection to the Everly Brothers goes way back. My mother was an Everly Brothers fan. I remember her playing them in the house and hearing songs like “Bye Bye Love” and “Wake Up Little Susie.”

The Everly Brothers’ harmonies are so immaculate. You can tell that they’re brothers and have been singing together basically since birth. They improved on the whole craft of singing harmony, and their harmonies are pretty much better than everybody’s.

Their 1958 album “Songs Our Daddy Taught Us”– I thought it was just so dark. They sounded like angels or spirits singing these really dark murder ballads and old southern hymns and folk songs that go back to the 17th century. It was just so different for them being rock and roll stars at the time to then take this turn looking at their family history and singing these songs. It was impressive. Read More »

Anoushka Shankar was midway through making her new album when her father, the acclaimed sitar player Ravi Shankar, died last year. His death had the effect of focusing her songwriting, and much of the album, “Traces of You,” became a reflection of Anoushka Shankar’s loss — including the song “Unsaid,” which premieres today on Speakeasy.

The song is one of three on “Traces of You” to feature Shankar’s half-sister, jazz-pop star Norah Jones, and is part of a collection of songs that Shankar said is a “journey through emotions” and a meditation on “the resilience of our spirits when we pass through struggle.” “Unsaid,” she told Speakeasy, is a perfect example.

“A few weeks after my father’s passing, I couldn’t sleep on the flight to New York, and wrote the lyrics for ‘Unsaid’ during that journey,” Shankar said. “When I reached New York, my sister Norah took those lyrics and almost immediately began to sing it in the melody she ended up using on the record. My solo flowed naturally out of me in response to her singing. There was a way in which I felt very open to discovery, rather than focused on a fixed destination, and that openness is what led me to a song that means a lot to me. Norah’s singing is really beautiful here, as always, but I find it particularly moving.”

Barbra Streisand on Feb. 24 will perform at the Academy Awards for the first time in 36 years, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced Wednesday. Streisand, who has won two Oscars herself, last performed at the awards ceremony on March 28, 1977, when she sang the theme song for “A Star is Born.”

Streisand won an Academy Award for Best Actress for “Funny Girl” in 1969, and later won for Best Original Song for “Evergreen” in 1977. Read More »

Two weeks ago, actress and singer Patti LuPone grabbed a cell phone out of the hand of an audience member who was texting during a performance of her current play, "Shows for Days." The bold move led to an outpouring of support from fans fed up with glowing screens. Ms. LuPone gives us her five rules of theater etiquette.